FEAR of Tony Abbott is corrupting the Turnbull Government’s judgment in fighting the Islamic State.

One potential result: new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull backs the failed policy of US President Barack Obama.

The clearest evidence of anti-Abbott sentiment influencing the Government came when Foreign Affairs Minister Julie Bishop this week misrepresented Abbott to discredit his argument that ground troops were needed to defeat IS. Abbott as PM repeatedly encouraged Obama and his officials to step up the US-led war on IS and in a speech in London last month called publicly for ground troops. Abbott repeated those calls after terrorists linked to IS murdered 129 people in Paris.

That unsettled Turnbull, according to insiders and journalists travelling with him. Turnbull cannot afford to look weaker on national security. Yet 15 months of the desultory US-led operation against IS suggest Abbott is right. Bombing has achieved little. IS has pulled back in some areas, but still controls eight million people and it is strong enough to have claimed credit not just for the Paris attacks, but for the downing of a Russian airliner and suicide bombings in Beirut.

Now even the White House press corps, usually so supportive, has turned on Obama after the Paris horror, which occurred just hours after Obama boasted on television he’d “contained” IS.

In an unusually hostile press conference this week, all but one question suggested Obama had failed. Yet Turnbull in his meeting with Obama this week instantly endorsed the President’s latest limp strategy — no ground troops, more co-operation with Russia’s bombing raids and a “political solution” — a “power sharing between various groups” in Syria that somehow accommodates supporters of the genocidal IS.

No wonder Abbott’s clarity makes Turnbull nervous. Then Bishop, a close Turnbull ally, this week smeared Abbott when he argued in The Australian for troops to be sent “preferably with Sunni states such as Turkey, Egypt and Jordan, as well as with the US, Britain and France”.

But Bishop falsely implied Abbott was an idiot who actually wanted Australia to invade alone, unilaterally: “As Tony Abbott well knows, Australia does not act unilaterally,” she sniped.

It suggested the Government does not dare discuss frankly the options in Syria — or why it’s doubling down on the strategy of a catastrophically weak President.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/tony-abbotts-clarity-is-creating-a...

____ wrote on Nov 19^th, 2015 at 8:46am:


Because the bombing campaign by warplanes has been so effective, hasn't it?

Loving the disunity in the Libs, makes a Labor win at the next election even more certain.

Come on Libs, you can do it, knife Turncoat and reinstate the thug. Bwahahahahahahaha!

Armchair_Politician wrote on Nov 19^th, 2015 at 8:51am:


you were the one supporting a bombing campaign 

South Viet Nam, Afghanistan all over again.

Armchair_Politician wrote on Nov 19^th, 2015 at 9:56am:



I look forward to seeing you in uniform boarding a Troop plane.

No, thought not, as long as it's someone else doing the killing & dying.

Armchair_Politician wrote on Nov 19^th, 2015 at 10:07am:


OMFG

Dsmithy70 wrote on Nov 19^th, 2015 at 10:24am:


Yep, you've got nothing. Just stupid.

Armchair_Politician wrote on Nov 19^th, 2015 at 10:07am:


The US was in Iraq for twice the length of WWI, Armchair. The problems in Iraq are not to do with any lack of US involvement, but the decisions they made during the occupation. The biggest mistake they made was ousting the Ba'athists (or ex-Ba'athists) from positions of power. Many of those Ba'athists went elsewhere, including ISIL. They took their weapons and their connections. And they took their grievances.

Howard wasn't involved in the post-war planning. But he was an active member of the so-called Coalition of the Willing. His decision to commit to the invasion of Iraq was the biggest folly the world has seen this century. Not only did it destroy any semblance of security in the Middle East, it saw the US lose its grip on power. It saw a trillion added to the US deficit, and for nothing. The result of the Iraq invasion was the creation of ISIS.

And this is why Obama is so "weak" today. The US has lost its grip on both hard and soft power in the Middle East. This has created a vacuum Iran and now Russia has jumped in to fill.